OpenStack / Cloud / Virtualizaton / Linux

Getting Started with the VMware Management Assistant

I've seen a lot of blog posts as of late regarding the death of the Service Console (COS). The rumors are that ESX is going to be replace completely with ESXi. While most Widows/Vmware Admins probably don't care, us Linux/Vmware admins are less than happy as we want nothing to do with the Windows PowerShell.

So I did some poking around and ran into the Vmware Management Assistant, which is a tiny VM. Here is the official spiel from Vmware

"The vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) allows administrators and
developers to run scripts and agents to manage
ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server systems. vMA is a virtual machine that
includes prepackaged software, a logging
component, and an authentication component that supports non-interactive
login."